A Dark Night in Salt Lake

Marc Levine mentioned Paul Leka in one of his recent posts and that brought back the memory of a concert we played in Salt Lake City. Paul Leka is a musician/writer/producer who is best known for “Na Na, Hey, Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye). He recorded it in a studio with some of his friends as a throw away B-side for a record. The song was credited to a non-existent group, “Steam”. When the song hit it big, Paul had to get a group together to tour and promote the song. This is where we come in. One day, in Los Angeles, our manager told us that we had a gig in Salt Lake City as an opening act for “Spirit”, with Randy California and Ed Cassidy As you can well imagine, we were thrilled at the prospect of playing a gig like that. The concert was going to be in the “Salt Palace” in Salt Lake City, Utah and we were to fly into Salt Lake City the day of the concert. We got to the airport in Los Angeles, that day, with all our equipment and our roadies and manager. Just before we were to board our flight, our manager told us that he wouldn’t be coming along. This seemed a little weird, but he told us not to worry because the promoter, Mike Tell, who was later married to Patty Duke for about a month in 1970 would be accompanying us on the flight. OK, we thought, no big deal. So we boarded the flight and took off for Salt Lake City. When we were at cruising altitude, Mike Tell, with a drink in each hand, told us that we had to perform as ourselves AND as “Steam”, because Paul Leka couldn’t get his musicians to leave Connecticut to do the gig and perform “Na Na, Hey Hey”. Now it was apparent why our manager didn’t accompany us on the flight. He knew we would have killed him on the plane! So, we arrived in Salt Lake, transferred our equipment to a rental truck and made our way to the “Salt Palace”. Our equipment was set up and we got ready to perform. We did our set and it was thrilling to play before a sold-out crowd of about 20,000 people and get a lot of applause. Then we left the stage and took a short break. “Steam” was then announced and we had to go back onstage and play “Na Na, Hey Hey”. As we were climbing up the stairs to the stage I vividly recall Leah looking at me and saying that this was the worst thing she ever had to do in her whole life. I must tell you, at this point, that there were posters outside the Salt Palace with pictures of “Steam” and those posters did not show any women in the group. Yet, we went back onstage and did their song anyway. I have no idea what the people in the audience must have thought, but at the end of the song, they applauded anyway. The icing on the cake, as if performing as “Steam” wasn’t bad enough, was after the show, when Mike Tell couldn’t get us the check for our performance from the people at the Salt Palace! Eventually, after several phone calls and threats of violence, we got our check and went back to LA. All in all, it was a dark night in Salt Lake.